The two weeks between championship weekend and the Super Bowl is an enormous deadtime for sports, especially if your team is not one of the two combatants.  Regular season NBA basketball is a bore, especially this year as the two best teams are snoozers, the only real excitement being if Kobe Bryant might actually pass to some unsuspecting teammate causing a concussion.  Therefore my thoughts are allowed to drift to the beauty that is Spring Training. Hope springs eternal at the beginning of baseball season and seeing as Peter Gammons has ranked the A’s second behind only the White Sox, who by the way we smoked in the season series last year, life is pretty good.  Who are we to question the almighty Gammons? 

How can you not like the look of this team?  Although the purse strings are still pretty tight, Billy Beane has been given a little extra allowance which he has spent wisely.  While 21 million for Esteban Loaiza seems somewhat steep, after Jarrod Washburn signed for a trillion dollars, it seemed like a bargain.  Pitcher’s salaries are out of control and to get a runner-up to the Cy Young award only two years ago for less than 8 million a year, incredible.  And it is not like Loaiza is going to have to go up against other number one pitchers as he did last season for the nationals, at best, he is the third starter on the A’s.  Loaiza is an incredible pickup as a third pitcher and the only pitcher over 27 in the rotation.  The potential is staggering. (Read the article)

Comments(0)